Monthly Archives: April 2017

Walpurgis Night

30 April 2017 – Astro-Weather: These spring evenings, the long, dim sea serpent Hydra snakes far across the southern sky. Find his head, a rather dim asterism about the width of your thumb at arm’s length, in the southwest. (It’s lower right of Regulus by about two fists at arm’s length.) His tail reaches all the way to Libra rising in the southeast.

Dominic Dunsmore

As twilight fades, look above the crescent Moon in the west for Pollux & Castor, & to the left of Bella Moona is Procyon.

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Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day 

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

Walpurgis Night, In Germanic folklore Walpurgisnacht, also called Hexennacht, literally “Witches’ Night” – the eve of the feast day of Saint Walpurga, an 8th-century abbess in Francia.  In Goethe’s Faust we see 2 scenes: ‘Romantic Walpurgis Night’ the night of a witches’ meeting on the Brocken, the highest peak in the Harz Mountains, a range of wooded hills in central Germany; and later in Part 2 a ‘Classical Walpurgis Night’ is featured.

Death Of Seneca by Manuel Dominguez

65 – Seneca, teacher of Nero, murdered

1789 – On the balcony of Federal Hall on Wall Street in New York City, George Washington takes the oath of office to become the first elected President of the United States

1812 – Birthday of the enigmatic Kaspar Hauser

1877 – Birthday of Alice B. Toklas, an American-born member of the Parisian avant-garde of the early 20th century. Life partner of American writer Gertrude Stein

1885 – The Niagara Reservation becomes New York’s first state park, ensuring that Niagara Falls will not be devoted solely to industrial & commercial use

1939 – The 1939-40 New York World’s Fair opens

1945 – Adolf Hitler commits suicide

1963 – The Bristol Bus Boycott is held to protest the Company’s refusal to employ Black or Asian bus crews, drawing national attention to racial discrimination in the United Kingdom

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Kirsty Mitchell

POD (Poem Of the Day) for Flora on Beltane:
May Day Maya
Pleiadian Goddess
Bright light of the 7 Sisters
Mountain Nymph transformed,
We ascend your beacon mound
& kindle there
The oakwood of the Bel-Fire
To rival the Sun
& call the Summer heat.
Zeus’s lover
Hermes Mother
Inspire processions
Of chimney sweeps & milkmaids
To leap the healing flames
& sky-clad singing:
“Ride a cock horse to Banburry Cross
To see a fine lady on a white horse”
Walk the circuit
& beat the bounds
With the young Summer King
& the Queen of the May
For the feast of flowers
Is calling forth the consort
Come, come, come unto me
& celebrate with the orders of Elementals.
Bold maidens bathing in the dew of May morn
Sword dancing & singing
In deep forest frivolity
Striking open ancient ley lines in bulls-eye archery
Marking the unrestrained tryst,
A Maypole in Holy-Rood-Mass
Wrapped & weaved in ribbons & ivy
For the May-Eve rites.
Robin Hood makes ready the hunt,
Maid Marian has gone-a-Maying.
~Lady Hazel

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This is the Eve of Beltane or May Day. Beltane, the old Celtic name for May Day, means bright fire or fire of Bel, the name of the Solar force, whose feast marks the beginning of the 2nd half of the year.

Wood from 9 sacred trees is gathered, & the great Bel-fire is built & ritualistically ignited by the High priestess or Arch-Druid. People would jump these ‘need-fires’ for fertility, healing & protection.

Torches lit from it were carried home to re-light the hearth fires. The folk would walk their animals in-between them to ensure a productive season – this is the mating season after all for man & beast.

There were other May Day customs, like walking the circuit of one’s property, repairing fences & boundary markers, processions of all kinds, archery tournaments, Morris dances, sword play, & of course making merry with music & drinking.

May morning is a time when the veil between the worlds can easily be pushed aside; but instead of the spirits coming into our realm from the other side, which is the case with Halloween, the polar opposite of Mayday on the wheel of the year -the fairies can enchant us over into their mystical realms.

This is a magical time, perfect for gathering ‘wild’ water, especially the May morning dew, or water from hidden wells & springs. These wild waters were collected & used to bath in for beauty, or to drink for health.

May Day is considered the start of summer – the time of milk & honey. This sensuous fertile energy is totally universal, & can be applied on many different levels. When we acknowledge these creative forces in the dance of our lives, it takes us to our own personal, modern-day version of dancing around the maypole, where we weave & combine the opposing energies within ourselves, blending them into one balanced source.

So yes, whether you know it or not, there will be at least one song that plays in your sub-conscious head on this eve of the 1st day of May, when you become perhaps, the Queen of the May, or Jack-in the Green. Our body like the body of the earth instinctively knows its Beltane, the time of vitality & passion & new growth. And the wisdom of our spirit seeks the natural union of polarities that occur at this time, giving us the opportunity for integration, in the alchemical dance of our souls…

Because under all the sexual innuendo & frivolity, it’s really all about the inner mystic marriage, the union of fire & water -opposites complimenting each other, to become one, bringing all the elements into balance.

You’ll just have to go dancing naked in the forest preserve on your own time…

For now, let’s work to unify the polarities of our being, by sparking the new fire of creative fertility & passion, & marrying it with the beautiful, healing waters of compassion & pure love. So we can truly celebrate the marriage feast of our lives, with a grounded, mindful joy.

So if it is your will – light your Bel-fire, marry it to the water, by floating it in the chalice of your choice. Take the time you need there…To do or not, what you will…Whisper your marriage vows into the water…or dance the 1st dance…or smash the glass…whatever your ceremony calls for…short simple or silent…it doesn’t matter…a 3 day bacchanal, with dancing puppets…it’s all good…cause it’s all about what’s inside…

Peace & Love

~Lady Hazel

Kathy Skyclad

Destiny Unfurling

29 April 2017 – Astro-Weather: Venus revealing Herself as the morning star appears brilliant in the eastern sky from the time it rises around 3:30 am CDT, until close to sunrise 90 minutes later. She stands above the horizon 45 minutes before the Sun comes up.

Georges Rouault

Now the curve of the crescent Moon next to the horns of Taurus, Zeta & Beta Tauri, points down toward Aldebaran & Mars at dusk

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Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day 

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

Feast Day of Saint Endelienta, a Cornish saint of the 5th century. She is believed to be a daughter of the Welsh King Brychan, & legend says that she was a goddaughter of King Arthur. She lived as a hermit at Trentinney where she subsisted on the milk of a cow

Giovanni di Paolo

1380 – Death Day of Catherine of Siena, Italian mystic, philosopher, a Scholastic philosopher & theologian & saint. She is believed to have had miraculous visions & felt herself to be united in marriage with Jesus.

Born as the Black Death-ravaged in Siena, Italy, to Lapa Piagenti, the daughter of a local poet, & Giacomo di Benincasa, a cloth dyer who ran his enterprise with the help of his sons. Lapa was about forty years old when she gave premature birth to twin daughters Catherine & Giovanna. She had already borne 22 children, but half of them had died. Giovanna was handed over to a wet-nurse & died soon after. Catherine was nursed by her mother & developed into a healthy child. She was two years old when Lapa had her 25th child, another daughter named Giovanna. As a child Catherine was so merry that the family gave her the pet name of “Euphrosyne”, which is Greek for “joy” & the name of an early Christian saint.

Catherine had her first vision of Christ when she was five or six years old: She & a brother were on the way home from visiting a married sister when she is said to have experienced a vision of Christ seated in glory with the Apostles Peter, Paul, & JohnAt age seven, Catherine vowed to give her whole life to God.

When Catherine was sixteen, her older sister Bonaventura died in childbirth; already anguished by this, Catherine soon learned that her parents wanted her to marry Bonaventura’s widower. She was absolutely opposed & started a massive fast, & cut off her long hair as a protest.

“Build a cell inside your mind, from which you can never flee.” In this inner cell she made her father into a representation of Christ, her mother into the Blessed Virgin Mary, & her brothers into the apostles. Serving them humbly became an opportunity for spiritual growth. She chose to live an active & prayerful life outside a convent’s walls following the model of the Dominicans. Eventually her father gave up & permitted her to live as she pleased.

Her custom of giving away clothing &food without asking anyone’s permission cost her family significantly, but she demanded nothing for herself.

In about 1368, age twenty-one, Catherine experienced what she described in her letters as a “Mystical Marriage” with Jesus. Catherine received, not the ring of gold & jewels that her biographer reports in his version, but the ring of Christ’s foreskin.” Catherine herself mentions the foreskin-as-wedding ring motif in one of her letters, equating the wedding ring of a virgin with a foreskin; she typically claimed that her own wedding ring to Christ was simply invisible

As social & political tensions mounted in Siena, Catherine found herself drawn to intervene in wider politics. She began travelling with her followers throughout northern & central Italy advocating reform of the clergy & advising people that repentance &renewal could be done through “the total love for God.” In Pisa, in 1375, she used what influence she had to sway that city & Lucca away from alliance with the anti-papal league whose force was gaining momentum & strength. It was in Pisa that she received the stigmata.

She received the Holy Eucharist almost daily. This extreme fasting appeared unhealthy in the eyes of the clergy & her own sisterhood. Her confessor ordered her to eat properly. But Catherine claimed that she was unable to, describing her inability to eat as an infermità (illness). From the beginning of 1380, Catherine could neither eat nor swallow water. On February 26 she lost the use of her legs. St Catherine died in Rome, on 29 April 1380, at the age of thirty-three, having suffered a stroke eight days earlier

Cover for Friedrich Schiller Play The Maid of Orleans

1429 – Joan of Arc – the Maid of Orléans, defeats the English which begins the process that ended with England’s complete expulsion from the continent.

It was necessary that the Maid of Orleans went through a kind of unaware initiation to fulfill her historical mission.

It concerned an initiation that could take place in the time of the thirteen nights between the 25th December and 6th January.

In the last time before birth the human being is especially accessible to unaware influences from the spiritual world.

On the 6th January the Maid of Orleans was born, to whom the Christ Impulse was implanted just before she saw the physical sunlight.

The Maid of Orleans intervened in the course of history in such a way that everything that happened later was determined through it.

The whole map of Europe would be different, also the spiritual life if the English had won.

The Maid was a servant of St. Michael. She was a warrior of his Will and brought this spiritual will to Earth by her determination and actions.

In the Central European civilisation were the springs for the whole spiritual culture of the future, the foundation of the ego-culture.

The human ego had to enkindle itself in the outside world, to be awake and realised internally. Thus the ego-culture of Central Europe was aroused from the objective events, the heroic sacrifices, that have brought the changes into etheric bodies and continue to do so, through the recorded memory.

It is necessary that, there would be souls, who send thoughts into the spiritual world like extending arms and bring down the consciousness from the spiritual world, souls conscious of spirit.

The proper purpose of all our endevours is to gain a living connection between the physical and spiritual worlds.

From the courage of the fighters,
From the blood of the battles,
From the grief of the bereaved,
From the nation’s sacrifices
Will grow up the fruits of spirit
If souls aware of spirit turn
Their senses to the spirit land.

~Rudolf Steiner, Spiritual Science, a Necessity for the Present Time, The Relation of Man to his Folk Soul – Nuremberg, March 13, 1915, GA 159

“In order to throw a little light on the occult understanding of history, we may ask the question: What would the development of modern Europe have been if at the beginning of the 15th century the Maid of Orleans had not entered the arena of events? Anyone who thinks, even from an entirely external point of view, of the development that took place during this period, must say to himself: Suppose the deeds of the Maid of Orleans were erased from history … then, according to the knowledge obtainable from purely external historical research, one cannot but realise that without the working of higher, super-sensible Powers through the Maid of Orleans, the whole of France, indeed the whole of Europe in the 15th century, would have taken on an altogether different form. Everything in the impulses of will, in the physical brains of those times, was directed towards flooding all Europe with a general conception of the State which would have extinguished the folk-individualities and under this influence a very great deal of what has developed in Europe during the last centuries through the interplay of these folk-individualities would quite certainly have been impossible.

Imagine the deed of the Maid of Orleans blotted out from history, France abandoned to her fate without this intervention, and then ask: Without this deed, what would have become of France? And then think of the role played by France in the whole cultural life of humanity during the centuries following! Add to this the facts which cannot be refuted and are confirmed by actual documents concerning the mission of the Maid of Orleans. This young girl, certainly not highly educated even by the standards of her time, suddenly, before she is twenty years old, feels in the autumn of 1428 that spiritual Powers of the super-sensible worlds are speaking to her. True, she clothes these Powers in forms that are familiar to her, so that she is seeing them through the medium of her own mental images; but that does not do away with the reality of these Powers. Picture to yourselves that she knows that super-sensible Powers are guiding her will towards a definite point — I am speaking to begin with, not of what can be told about these facts from the Akasha Chronicle, but only of what is confirmed by documentary evidence.

We know that the Maid of Orleans confided her vision first of all to a relative who — one would almost say, by chance-happened to understand her; that after many vicissitudes and difficulties she was introduced to the Court of King Charles who, together with the whole French Army, had come to his wit’s end, as the saying goes. We know too, how after every conceivable obstacle had been put in her way, she finally recognised and went straight to the King, who was standing among such a crowd of people that no physical eye could have distinguished him. It is also known that at that moment she confided to him something— he wanted to test her by it — of which it can be said that it was known only to him and to the super-sensible worlds. You also know from ordinary history that it was she who, under the unceasing impulse and urge of her intense faith — it would be better to say, through her actual vision — and in face of the greatest difficulties, led the armies to victory and the King to his crowning.

Who intervened at that time in the course of history? — None other than Beings of higher Hierarchies! The Maid of Orleans was an outer Instrument of these Beings, and it was they who guided the deeds of history”.

~Rudolf Steiner, Occult History, Lecture 2, Stuttgart, 28th December 1910

1862 –The Capture of New Orleans by Union forces in the American Civil War

1899 – Birthday of Duke Ellington, American pianist, composer, & bandleader

1901 – Birthday of Hirohito, Japanese emperor

1910 – The Parliament of the United Kingdom passes the People’s Budget, the first budget in British history with the expressed intent of redistributing wealth among the British public

1945 –The German army in Italy unconditionally surrenders to the Allies.

1945 –Führerbunker: Adolf Hitler marries his longtime partner Eva Braun in a Berlin bunker they both commit suicide the following day

1945 – Dachau concentration camp is liberated by United States troops

1991 – A cyclone strikes the Chittagong district of southeastern Bangladesh with winds of around 155 miles per hour killing at least 238,000 people &leaving as many as 10 million homeless

1991 – The 7.0 Mw earthquake affects Georgia with a maximum intensity killing 370 people

1992 –Riots in Los Angeles, following the acquittal of police officers charged with excessive force in the beating of Rodney King. Over the next three days 53 people are killed & hundreds of buildings are destroyed

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Kathrine Walters

POD (Poem Of the Day)

~What mystery is unfolding
In the heart-fires we are holding
In our hand we our molding
A new destiny
~hag

Be the Tree

28 April 2017 – Astro-Weather: As twilight fades in the west, spot Aldebaran & Mars to the lower right of the crescent Moon

Gray Crawford

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What is told as “history” today must first cease to be called “history.” In not too distant a future, instead of speaking of all the things contained in history as it is told today, people will speak of the spiritual impulses standing behind the historical evolution, impulses which are only perceived as if in a dream by human beings. These are the spiritual impulses that call man to freedom, and make him free, because they raise him to the world from which intuition, inspiration, and imagination come. For what happens outwardly on the physical plane, what constitutes outer history loses its meaning as soon as it has occurred, if not seen as a spiritual impulse… What is now called “history” is a “corpse-history” compared with the reality of what constitutes karma”. ~Historical Necessity and Freewill Lecture 5, by Rudolf Steiner, Dornach, 15 December, 1917

Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day 

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

Arbor Day – The first Arbor Day took place in 1872 in Nebraska. It was the brainchild of Julius Sterling Morton, a journalist & politician. Throughout his career, Morton worked to improve agricultural techniques when he served as President Grover Cleveland’s Secretary of Agriculture. But his most important legacy is Arbor Day.

Morton set an example by planting orchards, shade trees & wind breaks. He proposed that a special day be set aside dedicated to tree planting & increasing awareness of the importance of trees.  Nebraska’s first Arbor Day was an amazing success.  More than one million trees were planted.

Today all 50 states celebrate Arbor Day although the dates may vary in keeping with the local climate, usually the last Friday in April.  Arbor Day is also now celebrated in other countries including Australia.  Variations are celebrated as ‘Greening Week’ of Japan, ‘The New Year’s Days of Trees’ in Israel, ‘The Tree-loving Week’ of Korea, ‘The Reforestation Week’ of Yugoslavia, ‘The Students’ Afforestation Day’ of Iceland & ‘The National Festival of Tree Planting’ in India.  Julius Sterling Morton would be proud.  Sometimes one good idea can make a real difference.

For the homeowner, Arbor Day is an excellent opportunity to take stock of the trees on your property & plan for the future. Inspect your trees. Note any broken branches or evidence of disease or insect infestation. Think about how planting new trees might improve the look of your property or provide wind or heat protection.  Take a trip to your local nursery to see what’s available to get new ideas. Walk around your neighborhood. Are there any public areas where tree planting or tree maintenance might make a real difference to your community?  Talk with your neighbors.  Find out what their opinions are.  And, oh yes, plant a tree.

1945 – Benito Mussolini & his mistress Clara Petacci are executed by a firing squad consisting of members of the Italian resistance movement

1967 –Boxer Muhammad Ali refuses his induction into the United States Army & is subsequently stripped of his championship and license

1969 – Charles de Gaulle resigns as President of France.

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Rick Stevens

 

POD (Poem Of the Day)

~I come
To the stony place hidden
In the nook of a willow
By the great inland sea
It has the shape of memory
In its fragrance
My weeping unfurls
Into the earth
To be taken
Up by the thirsty laurel
Which bursts into bloom
With the souls of the dead
Like pale yellow flowers yet to come
Again like Spring
~hag

 

High notes of intention

27 April 2017 – Astro-Weather: Look for the thin crescent Moon low just after sunset. Gaze below Aldebaran & Mars there in the west-northwest in the twilight

Today the Moon also reaches perigee, the closest point in its orbit around Earth. Try to glimpse an ashen light faintly illuminating the Moon’s dark side. This is “earthshine,” – sunlight reflected by Earth that reaches the Moon & then reflects back to our waiting eyes

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Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day 

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

Feast day of Our Lady of Montserrat – One of the Black Madonnas of Europe, (“the little dark-skinned one” or “the little dark one”)- Believed by some to have been carved in Jerusalem in the early days of the Church. The Patron Saint of Catalonia, an honor she shares with Saint George. The famed image once bore the inscription ”Negra Sum Sed Formosa” (Latin: I am Black, but Beautiful).

The hymn to the Virgin of Montserrat, known as “el Virolai” is sung at noon on her feast day & begins with the words: “Rosa d’abril, Morena de la serra…” (April rose, dark-skinned lady of the mountain…). Therefore, this virgin is sometimes also known as the “Rosa d’abril”

Feast Day of St. Zita, the Italian patron saint of maids, often appealed to in order to help find lost keys. Born in Tuscany in the village of Monsagrati, not far from Lucca. At the age of 12, she became a servant in the Fatinelli household. For a long time, she was unjustly despised, overburdened, reviled, & often beaten by her employers & fellow servants for her hard work & obvious goodness. The abuse did not deprive her of her inward peace, & her love of those who wronged her. Her faith gradually moved the family to a religious awakening.

Zita often said to others that devotion is false if slothful. She considered her work assigned to her by God. She always rose several hours before the rest of the family to pray.

One anecdote relates a story of Zita giving her own food to the poor. One morning, Zita left her chore of baking bread to tend to someone in need. Some of the other servants told on her & when they went to investigate, they claimed to have found angels in the kitchen, baking the bread for her.

St. Zita died peacefully in her sleep & a star appeared above the attic where she lay. After 150 miracles were proven, she was canonized in 1696.

Her body was exhumed in 1580, discovered to be incorrupt, but has since become mummified. St. Zita’s body is currently on display for public veneration in the Basilica di San Frediano in Lucca.

On her feast day families bake a loaf of bread in her honor.

470 – Birthday of Socrates – teacher of Plato. Socrates gathers his pupils around himself, but how does he feel in relation to them? His manner of treating these pupils has been called the art of a spiritual midwife because he wished to draw out from the souls of his pupils what they themselves knew, and what they were to learn. He put his questions in such a manner that the fundamental inner mood of the souls of his pupils was stirred to movement. He transmitted nothing from himself to his pupils, but elicited everything from them. The somewhat dry and prosaic aspect of Socrates’ view of the world and the way he presented it comes from the fact that Socrates actually appealed to the independence and to the innate reasoning power of every pupil.” ~Rudolf Steiner, Gospel of Mark: Lecture 4

399 BC – Deathday of Socrates 

711 – Tarik ibn Ziyad, (who according to the spiritual scientific research of Rudolf Steiner in Karmic relationships Vol. 1 Chapter 10, reincarnated as Darwin) leads his army into Gibraltar

1667 – John Milton, blind & impoverished, sells the copyright of Paradise Lost for 10 pounds

1882 – Deathday of R.W.Emerson essayist, lecturer, & poet who led the transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. He was seen as a champion of individualism & a prescient critic of the countervailing pressures of society, & he disseminated his thoughts through dozens of published essays & more than 1,500 public lectures across the United States.

Emerson gradually moved away from the religious & social beliefs of his contemporaries, formulating & expressing the philosophy of transcendentalism in his 1836 essay “Nature”. Following this work, he gave a speech entitled “The American Scholar” in 1837, which Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. considered to be America’s “intellectual Declaration of Independence”.

Emerson wrote most of his important essays as lectures first & then revised them for print. His first two collections of essays, Essays: First Series (1841) & Essays: Second Series (1844), represent the core of his thinking. They include the well-known essays “Self-Reliance”, “The Over-Soul”, “Circles”, “The Poet” &”Experience”. Together with “Nature”, these essays made the decade from the mid-1830s to the mid-1840s Emerson’s most fertile period.

Emerson wrote on a number of subjects, never espousing fixed philosophical tenets, but developing certain ideas such as individuality, freedom, the ability for humankind to realize almost anything, & the relationship between the soul & the surrounding world. Emerson’s “nature” was more philosophical than naturalistic: “Philosophically considered, the universe is composed of Nature and the Soul”. Emerson is one of several figures who “took a more pantheist approach by rejecting views of God as separate from the world.”

He remains among the linchpins of the American romantic movement, & his work has greatly influenced the thinkers, writers & poets that followed him. When asked to sum up his work, he said his central doctrine was “the infinitude of the private man.” Emerson is also well known as a mentor & friend of Henry David Thoreau, a fellow transcendentalist.

(Spoken of by Rudolf Steiner as Tacitus in Vol 2 lecture 5, of Karmic Relationships. Tacitus was considered to be one of the greatest Roman historians. He lived in what has been called the Silver Age of Latin literature, & is known for the brevity & compactness of his Latin prose, as well as for his penetrating insights into the psychology of power politics )

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POD (Poem Of the Day)

~The Moon gate is freshly oiled
A Scythe cutting a way
Thru Mystery
Reverberating in my swelling heart
With high notes of intention
& the will toward freedoms mind…
~hag

Wrought with a kiss

26 April 2017 – Astro-Weather: Bella Luna is hidden in Her New Moon phase. She crosses the sky with the Sun & so remains secreted in our star’s glare

Sandra Ventren

Jupiter, the benevolent King, resides among the background stars of Virgo, northwest of Spica. To the left of Jupiter -about three fists at arm’s length – shines Arcturus, pale yellow-orange.

Jeremiah Briggs

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Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day 

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

1721 – A massive earthquake devastates the Iranian city of Tabriz. Many prominent mosques & schools in the city were destroyed, resulting in the deaths of over 250,000 people.  At the time that it occurred, the earthquake was popularly interpreted as an omen of misfortune, or a demonstration of godly wrath. The destruction that the earthquake caused was a significant factor in the successful Ottoman takeover of Tabriz in 1722, as well as contributing to Tabriz’s economic difficulties during that period.  It also caused the destruction of some of the city’s significant historical monuments

1803 – Thousands of meteors fall from the skies in L’Aigle, France; the event convinces European scientists that meteors exist. In the early afternoon a meteorite shower of more than 3000 fragments fell. Upon hearing of this event the French Academy of Sciences sent the young scientist Jean-Baptiste Biot to investigate that spectacular fall of stones. After painstaking work in the field he reported how these stones must undoubtedly be of extraterrestrial origin effectively gave birth to the science of meteoritics. The L’Aigle event was a real milestone in the understanding of meteorites & their origins because at that time the mere existence of meteorites was harshly debated, if they were recognized their origin was controversial.

1933 – The Gestapo, the secret police force of Nazi Germany, is established

1966 – The magnitude 5.1 earthquake affects the largest city in Soviet Central Asia. Tashkent is destroyed & over 300 people are killed.

1986 – Chernobyl nuclear disaster, Ukraine

1989 – The deadliest tornado in world history strikes Central Bangladesh, killing upwards of 2,300, injuring 22,000, & leaving as many as 180,000 homeless

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Jill Hardcastle

POD (Poem Of the Day)

~No fear is here
As I gather the serpents to my breast
Speaking their names I take their venom…
Burning with holy fire
I vomit the evil
Wrought with a kiss
Turning the poison into medicine
Smelting my words unto gold
In the eternal dance I twine the snakes into my DNA –
Now death lives on my forehead
Side by side with light
~hag